Several of the nation’s leading news outlets have rebutted a report from Fox News stating that the FBI is pursuing an indictment of the Clinton Foundation.
On Thursday, NBC News, ABC News and CNN all reported that Fox’s report was not true — and Bret Baier, the Fox News host responsible for the report, said he had spoken “inartfully” when he reported on the news.
By that point, however, The Hill and RealClearPolitics had published stories about Baier’s report, while countless conservatives sites claimed it as fact and celebrated Clinton’s possible imprisonment.
Brent Bozell, the founder of the conservative Media Research Center, slammed the major networks for ignoring Baier’s report. “The networks’ blackout… is beyond the pale,” he said.
Republicans picked up the report as well, with the National Republican Congressional Committee slamming Democratic candidates for supporting Clinton with “indictments likely.”
Those reports were further enhanced by the fact that Fox News EVP Jay Wallace said, “We stand by the reporting of the Fox News team.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign responded by calling on the FBI to make a public statement “to put a stop to these baseless Fox News reports.”
Seeking to clarify his remarks on Thursday, Baier said that his sources had told him that the FBI had “a lot of evidence that would, likely lead to an indictment,” but added, “that’s not, that’s inartfully answered. That’s not the process. That’s not how you do it.”
“There is confidence in the evidence, but for me to phrase it like I did, of course that got picked up everywhere, but the process is different than that.”
But the reports from NBC News, ABC News and CNN had no ambiguity.
“The idea that indictments are near or something like that, I’m told that’s just not true,” Pete Williams, NBC’s chief justice correspondent, reported.
“There’s been some reports out there today that an indictment is in the offing in the Clinton Foundation investigation,” reported CNN’s Evan Perez. “Everything we’ve known about this investigation — that’s been going on well over a year — is that that’s not true.”
ABC News called the report “inaccurate and without merit.”
By Thursday night, conservative sites like Drudge Report and Breitbart had taken down their alarmist headlines about the indictment.
